Inside the home at No. 8-2, Unit 1, Building 7, Jujia Garden Residential Quarter.
Song Hao and his wife, An Lifen, went to bed at eleven sharp, as usual.
After a busy day at the orphanage, Song Xiaoyu waited until her parents were asleep, then took a hot shower in the bathroom. While she was at it, she washed her hair thoroughly with the Pikang Shampoo she had bought at the pharmacy that day.
Following Shen Xing's advice, she had gone to the pharmacy after finishing her volunteer work.
After following Shen Xing's suggestion, she realized that her persistently itchy scalp was probably caused by dermatitis. So, at the pharmacy clerk's recommendation, she bought this Pikang Shampoo.
The clerk said the itching would noticeably improve if she kept using it for a week.
So Song Xiaoyu washed her hair very carefully, massaging her scalp thoroughly to help the medicated shampoo absorb completely.
After showering and drying her hair, Song Xiaoyu quickly climbed into bed. She propped herself up and looked at her phone for a while, then turned off the light and went to sleep.
At around one in the morning, she suddenly woke from a deep sleep. Her scalp was terribly itchy, and without realizing it, she had been scratching her head in her sleep.
Her fingernails had broken the skin, and the pain from her scalp was what finally woke her completely.
Never before had her scalp been this itchy. Song Xiaoyu began to wonder whether there was something wrong with that Pikang Shampoo.
The itching didn't fade after she woke. Instead, it grew worse at the back of her head, as if her scalp were about to tear apart.
Scratching her head, Song Xiaoyu couldn't help sitting up in bed. Still bleary-eyed, she switched on the bedside lamp and made her way to the bathroom in her bedroom.
She turned on the bathroom light and stood in front of the mirror, tilting her head to inspect it closely. Her scalp hadn't been scratched bloody, but it still itched.
Song Xiaoyu felt as if her whole head had gone numb. Afraid to keep scratching, she gently patted the back of her head instead.
She really wanted to sleep, but the itching made it impossible.
Just then, she felt something come away from the back of her head. It seemed like a lock of hair, or perhaps... a piece of scalp!
She reached up and pulled it off for a look. Sure enough, it was a piece of scalp with some hair attached, only about the size of two fingernails. It looked dried up, as if it had long since lost its nourishment.
Song Xiaoyu was startled. She hurriedly tilted her head and checked whether there was a patch missing from the back of her head. But after looking closely, she found nothing unusual. Her hair was still perfectly fine.
That meant the fallen scalp and hair might have come from the body's natural shedding process. It wasn't alopecia or hair loss.
After the piece of scalp fell away, the itching had eased considerably, and it continued to lessen.
Song Xiaoyu's unease lifted. She casually tossed the dried-up scalp and hair into the wastebasket beside the toilet.
She smoothed out her long hair. By then, the itching had nearly stopped, so she turned off the light, closed the door, and returned to bed, ready to sleep in peace.
About ten minutes later, in the darkness of the bathroom, the dried-up scalp with the long hair attached suddenly twitched in the wastebasket beside the toilet. Then the piece of scalp, which had seemed almost completely dried out, slowly unfolded like a thin sheet of skin.
Song Xiaoyu slept until the middle of the night, then suddenly woke again.
This time, she wasn't woken by an itchy scalp, but by a strange sound.
As she woke, she thought she heard laughter. It wasn't loud, but in the silence of the night, it was easy to hear.
Song Xiaoyu drowsily rolled over. Her scalp no longer itched, and she was still very sleepy. It felt like ages since she'd had such a comfortable night's sleep.
"Heh heh heh..."
Just then, the sound that had woken her rang out again.
Song Xiaoyu, nearly asleep, heard it clearly this time. Startled, she snapped her eyes open.
Everything before her was pitch-black.
She immediately reached for the bedside table and switched on the lamp.
A dim, pale-yellow glow filled the room. It wasn't bright, but it was enough to drive back the darkness. Song Xiaoyu sat up at once, eyes wide as she scanned the area around the bed.
She didn't see anything unusual.
She wondered if she'd imagined it, but when she thought it over, something still felt wrong. The sound had clearly resembled someone laughing. Though it hadn't been loud, it had sounded distinct. She couldn't have mistaken it.
She sat on the bed, dazed for a moment, but heard nothing else.
The warm, pale-yellow light made Song Xiaoyu feel a little safer. Her fear slowly ebbed, and she convinced herself she might have been dreaming. Perhaps she had slept so soundly that she mistook a sound from her dream for reality.
She picked up her phone from the bedside table and lit the screen to check the time. It was already four in the morning.
Song Xiaoyu had meant to turn off the lamp and go back to sleep, but now that she was awake, she felt a slight pressure in her lower abdomen. She had probably drunk too much water before bed. Having no choice, she got up, slipped on her slippers, and walked into the bathroom.
The moment she entered, she thought she heard a faint rustling sound. But as soon as she stepped inside, it stopped, making her wonder if there was a mouse or cockroach in the bathroom.
She immediately grew nervous and stood at the doorway, looking around carefully. Everything seemed normal. Nothing was out of place.
After a pause, Song Xiaoyu considered using the bathroom in the living room, but after thinking it over, she was too scared to go out.
Her parents were asleep, and she couldn't use the bathroom in their bedroom without waking them.
She looked around once more. After confirming that nothing seemed amiss, she finally summoned the courage to walk over to the toilet. As she sat down to relieve herself, she kept glancing around in case a mouse suddenly darted out from a corner.
She was especially afraid that a cockroach or something might crawl onto her feet without her noticing.
As she glanced this way and that, her eyes inadvertently swept over the wastebasket beside the toilet. She looked inside, and her body gave a slight tremble.
She remembered tossing the dried-up scalp and lock of long hair into the basket earlier. But now, at a glance, the piece of scalp was gone. Only the tips of the lock of hair were visible beneath the wastepaper.
It couldn't have been buried under the wastepaper in such a short time. After all, she hadn't thrown anything else into the basket since then. How could the paper have covered it?
Could there be a mouse in the wastebasket?
Just as Song Xiaoyu was wildly speculating, her eyes flew wide open. She stared at the basket without blinking.
The wastepaper covering the scalp and hair began to move slowly, as if something beneath it was turning over.
A moment later, the paper on top rolled toward the sides of the basket, and a mass of black hair came into view. There was clearly much more of it now, fluffy and tangled. It was no longer the single lock she had first thrown away.
The black hair slowly slid and turned over. This eerie sight left Song Xiaoyu rigid from head to toe, her thoughts frozen. She was completely stunned.
She couldn't understand why the hair she had thrown away had become so abundant. And besides, it seemed there was something beneath it!
About four or five seconds later, the mass of hair turned over completely, and a white face skin appeared before Song Xiaoyu's eyes.
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